Rachel K. Hunger Games

From what I understand, getting a job within a public school district is ridiculous and competitive. All the jobs come out around the same time (April or May) and none of the interviews really happen until the summer unless you are applying for a really specific or specialized position. Kevin has been listening to my building woes about interviewing without any real idea of how I'm doing or whether or not there is a purpose to these "pre-screening" interviews on campus. Today he told me he felt like vying for a teaching job was basically the Hunger Games.

I was born into a broken family an educational system that does not have any money.
I volunteered to head into "the game" to save my younger sister's life to earn the income to buy back my younger sister's used car.
I become a tribute for the 2012-2013 Hunger Games school year.
People tell me what to say, how to act, what to wear, and how to fake a relationship with Peeta Melark write resumes and cover letters.
I desperately want to head to District 13 the Seattle District, but it is a graveyard (for new teacher positions).
All at once, I and my competition are brought to the arena.
At the sound of the horn completion of the budget, the games begin.
Utter chaos.
There is only one stack of resources and everyone heads towards them at the same time.
Few survive.
Then I hopefully kill everyone receive a job offer and win the games the right to a one-year contract that will likely expire.
Then basically the same thing happens for two more books years until I reach my melancholy ending continuing contract.

Behold, the illustrated version:

Rachel K. 7 Devils

Boof, the stress is starting to surround me from upcoming interviews, information sessions, resumes, cover letters, student teaching, the daily disappointments of public school curriculum (not always, but sometimes), revving up for classes at the end of March, and the overpowering knowledge that come the 2012-2013 school year, I have no idea what I will be doing. Will I have a job? Will I be on a waiting list? Am I any good at teacher interviews? I feel like I am, but am I good enough to compete with other people who are good?

So I'm contenting myself with sweatpants, computer games, and lesson planning while I take the "final breath before the plunge," as Tolkein put it.

I'll be honest though. I could easily just listen to Florence and the Machine for the next three hours and cry.

Rachel K. Reflections

Rachel Sreebny’s Weekly Reflections

March 5 – 9, 2012

This week, I began teaching writer’s workshop alongside Leslie. She coached me a lot in terms of what the 5th graders have done in the past and how to tackle the amounts of information without talking for too long. The students are starting to dream up their fiction ideas, and it was up to me to get them excited about imagining their own characters. Students were able to make connections to their space colony characters, which they made the week previous for our Storypath unit. We created lists of traits and reflected on our own traits (positive AND negative), which was interesting to assess later on. Space Colony continued this week and we launched into learning about the solar system. I have combined the core content standard mini-unit on space science into the more engaging, narrative curriculum that Storypath offers. This way, the students are learning what they need to learn in order to be at grade level, but I am presenting it to them with a more meaningful and aligned premise. The gravity lesson during the “great blackout of Friday” was a big hit, and even the ELL and special needs students hit the learning target and were able to explain how gravity keeps us on the earth. Students also created informational planet posters, which allowed them to demonstrate their mastery of non-fiction reading and writing for the purpose of gathering and referencing specific research. This research will help students choose a planet that they’d like to colonize during our next episode of the Space Colony.

The only challenge this week was that students for the most part were unable to apply their knowledge of landmarks (maximum, minimum, mode, and median) to a set of values. In order to give students more practice with this skill, Leslie and I are going to use landmarks as our warm-up whiteboard work every morning until

the students can do it upside-down and in their sleep! Other than that, it was another wonderful and wild week at Kimball. I will miss these kids deeply when my internship ends on April 13th.

Rachel K. Reflections

Rachel Sreebny’s weekly reflections for Week 20 (Feb 27 – March 2, 2012)

                This week I started teaching all subjects and leading the classroom in place of Mrs. Cake.  It was very challenging, but I had a lot more fun each day and the hours seemed to melt away between the first and last bell of the day.  I had used a great deal of mid-winter vacation to plan for Reader’s Workshop, CMP II: Bits and Pieces for math, Space Colony Storypath for our content and writing subjects, spelling, vocabulary, and general daily items like cougar of the month voting, transitioning, and supervising on the class field trip to the EMP.

                Reader’s Workshop is a lot of fun to teach, but was challenging in that I had to present a lot of information quickly and still ensure that students had plenty of time to build their reading appreciation and stamina. This was particularly difficult coming back from a week of vacation! I enjoyed the curriculum a lot and was able to adapt it effectively so that all students were able to use reading strategies and think about unifying ideas in their personal reading selections. I am looking forward to starting Writer’s Workshop next week because of the similarity and connections between the curricula.

                Math was interesting because the CMP curriculum was originally designed and implemented in 6^th grade classrooms. While the subject matter of fractions, decimals, and percentages is nothing new or impossible for the minds of 5^th graders, the tasks set forth in the text books were indeed a bit challenging for the majority of students. The most effective way that I was able to teach this curriculum was to have students practice daily on their white board, which Mrs. Cake advised, and I scaffolded strategies through which to solve tricky problems on the board and then let students practice these strategies on their homework. I believe that giving the students opportunities to work on homework in class was a deviation from the norm, but the effect was clear: all students attempted to complete their homework. When we switch back to Everyday Math next week, I will be glad of the 5^th grade friendly directions and workbooks once more.

                The Storypath: Space Colony was my favorite part of the week. Although I always felt rushed for time, I chose to look at it as “teaching with urgency,” which was something we were advised to do in our teacher preparation program. I brought in sample books of wallpaper and upholstery and created skin tone paper dolls of all skin tone colors. The students set forth to create their own individualized space colonist dolls, representing multiple nations, ages, and occupations. Students also filled out job applications for their characters, wrote in personal “Travel Logs,” and gave self-introductions in front of their class. It was challenging for students to be heard during their introductions because of the general noise of the open-concept classroom, but I didn’t observe any real nervousness or shyness as I watched the students, and I believe this speaks to the progress they are making as students and as young people. Travel log writing was successful in that this group of students who usually hates writing anything down on paper seemed almost eager to put down their character’s story, feelings, and hopes for the space colony future. My shining moment was when I read ELL student Tam Ta’s travel log, in which she had included the phrase, “See you later, Earth!” It was the most creative her writing has ever been, and I feel confident that student buy-in has been achieved this week in our content and writing areas. I am enthusiastic to start next week with more attention to science  - particularly to the solar system and attributes of its 8 planets.

                My greatest challenge this week was in classroom management. I am not the seasoned teacher that Mrs. Cake is, and so students often took their time during transitions, as if to test how patient Ms. Sreebny could be. However, I believe that my patience and rationale for any reprimands or corrective actions I took were understood as necessary by all of the students. I also had students practice their classroom transitions during the first few minutes of recess; students were timed and judged as they lined up, came to sit down, and returned to their desks. We practiced as many times as we needed to until it was perfect, and I have noticed a small but significant change in their transition behaviors. I will continue to work on my classroom expectations with the 5^th graders this following week, and I look forward to reflecting on strategies that are effective so to add them to my own classroom management tool belt. 

Rachel K. Space Colony (Part 1)

SPACE COLONY - The Tiny Frontier

I started a Storypath curriculum entitled SPACE COLONY (always said in all caps because it is always yelled) today. I am so excited for this and have been waiting MONTHS to get going on it.

Students came up with a list of ideas for the types of jobs we will need on our international space station. I refer to the students as colonists, and the class was buzzing with excitement (and talking over each other with excitement as well). We came up with some pretty good jobs, and even some of the more space cadet students seemed to be interested in something or another. I'm looking forward to day 2 when the students will start making job applications and character dolls.

The students finished their job applications and started working on their character dolls. It was a hot mess. I have four boys who want to be the ship captain, so I'm going to decide on whose character has the most impressive job application to award that gem of a job - MWAHAHAHAH JOB APPLICATIONS MATTER. We had a fantastic 90 minutes of fabric cutting, wallpaper sample tracing, book research, Internet research, and lots and lots and LOTS of discussion. All in all, excellent progress so far; my students are inherently good at running around with scissors and making a mess. We'll see what happens when they find out they have to do work, too. Tomorrow will be the completion of the dolls and we will start writing Travel Logs and Introductions to practice their public speaking skills.

The kids got together in groups and made planet posters today. It was hectic, but I threw together a cooperative learning lesson. Each group of 3 students had a job (either manager, creative director, or researcher), and I prepped a lot of research for each planet because we only had 45 minutes to do 90 minutes worth of curriculum. The posters look fine, but if I could do it again, I would have given them black paper and just had them paste colored paper on it instead of starting wtih white paper. I think they would've turned out more interestingly. The class across the way saw how my class' posters turned out and did exactly that. While I am still in the puerile stage of seething that "the other teacher's class' posters look nicer than my students' and that makes me angry," I will get past that and simply revamp my plans for next time.